Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2010/08/26

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Subject: [Leica] 35 mm format is best?
From: mark at rabinergroup.com (Mark Rabiner)
Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2010 02:57:09 -0400

The vast majority of the serious photography going on nowadays is being done
on 24x36mm sensors. To shoot 18 ? 13.5 mm off handedly seems a bit daft.
Calling it the same dafter. Unless the issue is the camera has to fit in
your pants pocket.
2x crop circle cameras are two formats away from ideal.

The whole idea behind Leica from day one is to have a handy small camera
with as big a negative as possible in that camera.
Doubleframe it was called them. It used twice the length of the film as was
common for film and early still versions of cameras using film. We now know
Barnack did not think up the idea of using movie film to shoot stills.

Leica cameras when they came out were made by a concern which had been
making microscopes for years they were not toys. Leitz.  But also they were
not single frame. Movie frame. Which was 18x24 or 18x22 as most other
cameras shooting movie film for stills had been so far then.
Barnack had done tests and decent (mathematically as well) that the film
needed to be doubleframe to get the kind of results needed. At decent
magnifications.

For a camera roughly the size of a 35mm camera the ideal digital would
obviously be a Leica.
A Leica S2. The problem being price and as a medium format camera its less
idea for cutting edge fast street photography. And low light. But for a lot
else its the camera to have.
Its got the best ration of format to camera size of any camera I'm aware of.
Other than a Leica X1.

I think Leica is really doing just fine in its camera design and direction.
As close to ideal as possible.

--------------------
Mark William Rabiner
Photography
mark at rabinergroup.com


> From: Tarek Charara <tcharara at mac.com>
> Reply-To: Leica Users Group <lug at leica-users.org>
> Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2010 01:56:05 +0200
> To: Leica Users Group <lug at leica-users.org>
> Subject: Re: [Leica] 35 mm format is best?
> 
> Well, I'll have to disagree on that one? Acreage is surely important?
> if and only if you use same quality optics.
> I used to shoot the works of artists for catalogs and books with a MF
> Mamiya or a Bronica. 6x7cm.
> The revelation came the day an artist asked me to double the shoot
> with 35mm slide he needed for a projection. I used a Leica R and a
> 50/2 for that.
> When the slides came back in MF and 35mm, it was obvious that the 35mm
> slides were far better than the stuff made with MF. This was not only
> about sharpness or resolution, but also about colour accuracy and
> rendition. The artist believed that the 35mm slides looked better than
> his original paintings. Leica optics were far better than the optics
> of Bronica or Mamiya I had at that time (end of the 80's)?
> 
> YMMV
> 
> All the best from the south of France!
> 
> Tarek
> 
> -------------------------------------------------
> Tarek Charara
> <http://www.tarekcharara.com>
> 
> NO ARCHIVE
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Le 26 ao?t 10 ? 23:27, Mark Rabiner a ?crit :
> 
>> Trust me Jeffery I have long experience with Panatomic x it is my
>> signature
>> film.  Panatomic in 35mm does not a Rolleiflex or Hasselblad make.
>> I had to prove that well known fact to myself before I started
>> saving up for
>> medium format systems.
>> The bottom line with film as well as digital capture is always going
>> to be
>> Real estate real estate real estate.
>> Acreage acreage acreage.
>> You can set your little format camera to iso 100 but as an image
>> making tool
>> a larger format camera is going to still blow it out of the water on
>> a slew
>> of accounts.
>> This is not my quirky opinion but the first thing anybody learns
>> when they
>> get into photography either in the classroom, in the real world, or
>> reading
>> a good photography book. The point in denying that is what? You
>> don't get to
>> play with little cameras?
>> 
>> As far as this thread name goes... It is just as poorly thought out
>> as the
>> text which was under it.
>> 35mm is not "best" and I certainly never implied that and didn't see
>> anybody
>> else imply that.
>> What is "best" is not crippling yourself with a format smaller than
>> necessarily to get the shot done well.
>> 
>> --------------------
>> Mark William Rabiner
>> Photography
>> mark at rabinergroup.com
>> 
>> 
>>> From: Jefffery Smith <jsmith342 at gmail.com>
>>> Reply-To: Leica Users Group <lug at leica-users.org>
>>> Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2010 09:23:09 -0500
>>> To: Leica Users Group <lug at leica-users.org>
>>> Subject: Re: [Leica] 35 mm format is best?
>>> 
>>> I'm with you on that. If the most important facet is high resolution,
>>> Panatomic x might still be on the shelves. And Holga would be a
>>> very bad idea
>>> that never materialized.
>>> 
>>> Jeffery
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> Leica Users Group.
>> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Leica Users Group.
> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information




In reply to: Message from tcharara at mac.com (Tarek Charara) ([Leica] 35 mm format is best?)